Funny Things I Did in the Navy

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by SkiprJohn

Subic Bay = Sailor's X-rated Disneyland

Must be a few funny stories..........

[mmckee1952]

We had just come off our radar advisory station in the northern part of the Tonkin Gulf (Vietnam) and were in Perth, Australia taking a few days off. All of the CIC crew was about as hipped up as you could imagine, with being on Port & Starboard (6hr?s on 6 hr?s off) watches for 8 weeks, they were really zoned.
As we were on our way back to the ship from the local watering hole around 2 AM, we walked past a swimming pool just saying ?Oh come on cool yourselves off guy?s? so we all claimed over the fence and proceeded to take our clothes off and jump in. About an hour later all of the overhead lights around the pool came on and the huge Australian soldier who was wearing this big bush hat with the side turned up and a riding whip tucked under his arm, was standing on one of the diving boards looking down at all of us and he said, ?well aren?t we a fine looking lot?. I thought I was going to crap myself right then & there. All I wanted to do is hide somewhere, but where do you hide in a pool?
He proceeded to inform us (his words) that we, not only weren?t supposed to be there, but it was the base commanders privet pool to boot and he and his wife would appreasheat it, since they had been woken up by our fun and games if we would be so kind, to inform our Commanding Officer when we got back, that he would meet him for breakfast at 7am the next morning here at his house.
Well you can say that was our last night and only night out on the town for that stay in port plus the next one also. Things have changed since then and I bet our fates would?ve been much worse, if this had happened now.
You know what they say, ?It all counts on 20?.

Mike
OSCS

[Mule]

Yeah, lost some liberty but you kept a great story.

My career Air Force uncle tells a great one.

Their (2) assignment was (around 1950 on Okanawa) to take a cherry picker, move a 3 hole out house, burn the crap with avation gas, dig another hole and set the outhouse on the new hole.

They got out of order. They dug the hole, gassed the crap THEN went to get the cherry picker after putting a closed sign on the outhouse.

Their CO and an Okanawa woman entered around the sign the middle hole open, the co threw a smoke between his legs, blew the house off the hole, covered them and everything in site in shi+, flashed burned the hair off the
CO, and the woman was last seen running perhaps still to this day. The empty hole in the middle saved them but also created a volcano.

No Court Marshall due to the sign and the entire base LTAO. Fast forward 10 or so years, social situtation for lifers, enlisted and comissioned. My tall very good looking Master Sgt yankee jew uncle dancing with said CO's wife, now he is a full bull, she looks up at Art, starts laughing says, "So you are the one", they look over at the Colonel who is glaring.

Some scars just don't hair over do they?

[mmckee1952]

We were on a western pacific (Westpac) cruise onboard the USS Ranger CV-61 and we had brought an IntellaVision computer game system to play with in the OI division office. We had football games and others there for our use, but the one that all of the Anti Submarine Air Controllers (ASAC) and Air Intercept Controllers (AIC) liked was the Sub hunt game. This game put you as the Commanding officer of a WWII Submarine that was trying to sink enemy shipping. Well the one draw back to the game was you needed to have one person using one controller that does the maneuvering of the Sub and another person on another controller doing the weapons.
Bill Carpenter and myself were there playing around 9pm and we had the door to the office open and one of our CIC officers who just made lieutenant Commander (LCDR) stopped by, partly because we were making too much noise, but also to see what we were up to.
LCDR Parker, whose nick name was Thor, (because he stood 5ft 2? and looked like he was 21 at the time), who was the Command Duty Officer (CDO) at the time, asked if we had everything under control, to which Bill and I said we needed a Tactical Action Officer (TAO) to coordinate the approach to the ship we were hunting.
LCDR Parker pulled up a chair behind us and got right into it with us, ordering various maneuvering changes and weapons assignments for the next two hours, it was pretty good while it lasted, BUT about the time we were coming in for the kill for the 5th time, a new head popped into the office, the Excitive Officer (XO). He looked at us and at his CDO and got this big grin on his face and asked us if this was part of the ?NEW CIC TRAINING SCHEDUAL? and LCDR Parker didn?t miss a beat and said, ?Yes Sir, we?ve been honing our skills ever since we left San Diego. The XO smiled then said to LCDR Parker that it might be good if he would secure his TACO duties and get back to the CDO duties, this was done with a smile and wouldn?t you know it, the XO asked us if he could try his TACO skills there for awhile, we kept on playing till 2am that night.

Mike
OSCS

[mmckee1952]

WAR DOG?S BIRTHDAY

Just as I was getting ready to transfer off the USS Ranger CV-61, eight of us were flying back to the states from over sea?s and our division officer LCDR Jack Blackie was going also. LCDR Blackie was a ruff and tumble sort of guy, he started out in the Navy as an seaman and worked his way up to LCDR. He was the kind of guy who would when he was hearing or talking to you would have his glasses pulled down on the tip of his nose and squint over them at you and when he had heard enough of your usual BS about this or that he would just say, ?PETTY OFFICER _________ JUST CAN IT? and you knew you were done.
Well back to my story, we all got together and came up with this idea to have our wives make up a big sign and have it at the airport saying ?HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK BLACKIE / WAR DOG?. Well this went on & on and we also decided to, while we were flying to have the flight attendant have a cake brought out to Blackie & sing Happy Birthday on the plane. Blackie was sitting 6 rows ahead of us and the seven of us, all Petty officer First Class were all sitting together behind him. As the flight attendant came up to him, with three others and started singing all of us in the back started clapping. Well needless to say Blackie looked back at us and if looks could kill we?d be goners.
As we were getting off the plane in San Diego, CA, Blackie told us we were toast when we got back to the ship. It was too later to stop the big banner our wives had made so we just went along with it. To add to this Blackie?s wife had been there with the other wives and she joined in on the gag and bought stuff to throw at his as he came off the ramp, thank God there were women around or her would have had a little fit, but he saw everyone was having a grand time of it and he himself joined in on the fun.
Some of the things you dream up out at sea are not for the faint hearted sometimes.

Mike
OSCS

[cosmosmariner]

Here's a picture of the USS Dixie AD-14, site of some of the funny stories, as she lay at anchor in Hong Kong Harbor in 1971:

[mmckee1952]

Cosmosmariner,
I might have this wrong, but while I was in Kowshung harbor in 1974 and the DIxie came into port and as she was turning to port to anchor her stearing went out and she T-boned a freightor along side the pier. It all happened in slow motion and afterwards her jack staff on the bow was tillted back pretty good, didn't do a whole lot of damage, but you should have seen the sailors on the ship on the pier running around all over the place.

[SkiprJohn]

My next door neighbor was stationed on the Dixie in the 50s. She was in service many many years. I've been aboard her many times when my destroyers were being repaired and I was visiting CRUDESPAC staff.

Kaoshung Taiwan? That was one of my first overseas ports on USS Carpenter DD825 in the early 60s. Amazingly poor place at that time. Very modern now.

regards

[captain465]

SkiprJohn,
Good to see another tincan sailor here.........USS Bristol, DD 857......ResDesDiv 30, Brooklyn, NY.

Capt Fred

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Capt Fred,
I was in a Res Des (27?) out of San Francisco for a bit aboard USS Cowell DD547. I think it was the oldest ship I was on. Pre WWII built. Old Fletcher.

[cosmosmariner]

Originally Posted by mmckee1952

Cosmosmariner,
I might have this wrong, but while I was in Kowshung harbor in 1974 and the DIxie came into port and as she was turning to port to anchor her stearing went out and she T-boned a freightor along side the pier. It all happened in slow motion and afterwards her jack staff on the bow was tillted back pretty good, didn't do a whole lot of damage, but you should have seen the sailors on the ship on the pier running around all over the place.

Yikes! and only 2 years after a complete refit! Well, I'll bet the Admin compartment floor held up ok!

On our return to San Diego from Yokosuka, Japan we were in moderately bad weather (no green water over the bow but very windy and rainy, edge of a storm stuff) somewhere off the Aleutian Is. I was standing in the aft cargo door you can see in the picture. I was looking up at least 30' higher at the top of the breaking seas I guessed about 50' above the waterline. At that moment I developed a very healthy respect for the ocean. Later I walked aft to the fantail and stood with my back to the main weather deck rail. I could feel the prop rotating as we struggled up the face of the seas...thump...thump...thump until we reached the crest. She would slowly fall over the crest and begin to run down the back of the sea gaining speed until the prop was free wheeling and I couldn't feel the vibration any more. Even though the Dixie had a beam of 75' and a length of 680' she began to fishtail down the back of the sea until she reached the trough. Then it began again ...thump ...thump ...thump... falling over the crest then fishtailing down the back. I must have stayed there an hour or more, it felt like I was riding a 680' long-board....what a rush! I will never forget it!

[Blue Stocking]

Not ex-Navy, but in my years with the Bermuda Fire Service as a Special Projects officer, I worked many times with Military ships from all over the world. While at the Ontario Fire College In Gravenhurst in 1971, I bunked with 3 guys from Mississagua.
One of the guys asked me if I remembered the time a Canadian minesweeper rammed a barge while coming alongside at Front Street. I said yes I did, in fact, my brother was a hard hat diver on the bottom at the time, and the barge almost sunk on top of him. He said "tell him I'm sorry, I was the helmsman" Small world.

Another time, shore training aboard a RN nuclear sub, we were asked after training if we officers would join the boat's officers in the wardroom for a drink. We said yes, and at about 1100 hrs, I was sipping straight vodka, no ice, no chaser. I shudder now, when I think about it.

You all have earned my greatest respect

[Talbot]

Most frightening thing was back in 72, I was in a 400 ton minesweeper rounding the top of Scotland when we got hit by a force 11 around Cape Wrath (well named). We managed to struggle through to the shelter of the islands down the north west coast. This was fine while behind the lee of the islands, except we were pushed over about 15-20 degrees just by the wind force. This became a bit of a problem as the Starboard cooling water">engine cooling water intake was so often out of the water that we had to run only on the port engine. So there we were pushing along on one engine at minimum revs, which meant that the engines did not burn all the fuel, and it accumulated in the funnel.

We would normally de-clutch the engine and run the revs up every couple of hours until the system got hot enough to spit all the fuel out (otherwise there was a significant danger of a funnel fire) - but this was just not possible so we crossed fingers and prayed a lot.

As we crossed between the islands, we were swept by some really bad seas (not a lot of fun in an open bridge sweeper) - we lost our liferafts, all our HF radios, and even our steaming lights that sheared off the mast.

I was on the bridge when we had to "dash" through one of the larger gaps. We got hit broadside by a really big wave. We went over 70 degrees. I was holding onto the compass pelourus with my feet in the air, and nothing much below me except very cold and wet sea, shouting and screaming at the old girl to come back up.

As you can tell from the fact that I am writing this, she did come back up. We got into a good lee in the next island and anchored - but had no means of telling anyone why we were not where we were supposed to be. The following morning, the maritime reconnaissance aircraft were up looking for us!

[cosmosmariner]

Originally Posted by Talbot

Most frightening thing ...

I was holding onto the compass pelourus with my feet in the air, and nothing much below me except very cold and wet sea, shouting and screaming at the old girl to come back up. ...

As you can tell from the fact that I am writing this, she did come back up.

I'm glad you made it! Given that, the visual of hanging on to the pelourus IS funny!

[SkiprJohn]

I hate it when the good stories end by, "There we all were swamp by a 50 foot wave and we all died." Perfect Storm
regards